We live on these streets. But they’re not ours

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The reason we are so surprised by the broomstick army is that we have lost our bond with the places we live in

Only one photograph of the splintered, jagged awfulness of the past week has made me laugh. That was the one of a miserable woman handcuffed by police outside a branch of Currys, in a uniform that suggested she worked at Currys.

Maybe she didn’t. Let’s be fair. Maybe she hadn’t just smashed up the very place on which her own livelihood depended. Maybe she was cold as she went about her looting and opted to also loot a fetching Currys fleece. Or maybe it was part of a cunning ruse not to get arrested. “Thank God you’ve come!” she might